Chapter I 



BIOLOGY AND HUMAN PROBLEMS 

 by Edward M. East 



DURING the past century and a quarter science has 

 remodeled man's universe. In this period, so short 

 that many of us have talked with those who saw its onset, 

 more significant discoveries have been made than in all 

 previous ages combined. One cannot picture vividly the vast 

 changes induced by probing the secrets of atom, molecule, 

 and cell. Comfortable dwellings, luxurious journeys, 

 instantaneous communication, sanitary conditions, longer 

 and healthier spans of life, economic and intellectual 

 freedom, are accepted casually, without emotion, without 

 thanksgiving. We think of them as part of our natural 

 environment — like clouds or sunshine or green trees. But 

 conditions were quite different at the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth century, so different that an evening with the most 

 impressively written history of the time fails to carry us 

 back and to identify us with the situation that confronted 

 our great-grandparents. Perhaps a visit to central Africa 

 might do it, but few of us have such an opportunity. 



Unfortunately science has not recast man's thinking to 

 anything like the same degree. The average mind is still 

 fettered to myths conceived in distant eras of unreason. 

 The proportion of persons guided by rational ideas has 

 certainly increased in recent years; but an intellectual lag 

 obtains which shows in even the best of us. The trouble 

 is that the whole world profits from all new discoveries, yet 

 only the exceptional few care about the philosophy of 

 thought which makes them possible. 



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